1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a soldering iron. More specifically this invention relates to a soldering iron including a solder tip and heater electrically heating the tip end.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, sizes of the parts and substrates on which soldering work needs to be performed have been getting smaller and thus the precision work has been on demand for soldering work. As a result, the dimension between the tip end and the grip portion was required to be shorter. However, shortening the dimension between them leads to the situation such that the grip portion of the soldering iron gets easily hot, necessitating to halt the soldering work or to have a user wear a thick grove, which, in turn, makes the precision work highly difficult. Or there is another way to cope with this situation, that is, to mount a thermal insulation type cover around the grip portion; however, doing so necessitates addition to the extra member to the soldering iron, in turn, raising the cost thereof. Moreover, doing so increases the diameter of the grip portion, which, in turn, leads a user to feel less comfort when gripping the grip portion. Thus there has been a demand to control the temperature of the grip portion under the certain level even during the long period of use and to keep the dimension between the grip portion and the tip end short so that the precision work can be performed for a long period of time.
Thereupon, an object of the present invention is to provide a soldering iron having a relatively short dimension between the tip end and the grip portion and it still can be used for a long period of time without the temperature of the grip portion exceeding the certain level.
In order to achieve the object noted above, according to the present invention, a soldering iron comprises: a tip end; a heater portion for electrically heating the tip end of the soldering iron; a holding portion provided at the rear end of the heater portion including: a heat pipe structure having at least one heat pipe provided in the holding portion; a heat pipe holder for holding the heat pipe to which heat generated at the heater portion is transferred; and a grip portion placed externally around the first heat pipe holder.
With the aforementioned features of the soldering iron, the temperature raise of the grip portion due to the heat transfer from the heater portion is suppressed to the certain level. Thus the dimension between the tip end and the front end of the grip portion can be made shorter than the conventional type soldering iron which uses no heat pipe without raising the temperature of the grip portion beyond the un-tolerable level. Furthermore it enables to shorten the length of the projected amount of the soldering tip, i.e., the dimension between a tip end and the front end of the grip portion, by a certain amount such that the temperature at the grip portion is still maintained at a tolerable level. This leads to the possibility of shortened tip, which in turn reduces the cost for the soldering tip in some degree.
These and other objects and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent upon reading of the following detailed description along with the accompanied drawings.